Search Results for: Mortgages
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Latest property news
Home truths and Churchside join forces
Home Truths has announced a new partnership with Chorley based Churchside Financial Planning Solutions...
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Latest property news
That’s loyalty! Connells Chairman celebrates 40 years with the company
A study of business leaders around the world recently found that the UK’s move on faster than in any other country apart from Brazil, Russian and India. The average tenure at the top is 4.8 years, down from 8.3 years seven years ago, the research by PwC revealed. No one has told the chairman of Connells Group, Stephen Shipperley (pictured, right), about this because this month he is celebrating his 40th anniversary with the company. “My own experience is testament to the emphasis that the company places on developing people within this business, giving those with potential the opportunities to advance and progress,” he says. “As a result, we have some of the best people in the industry and good people stay here. Most of our management, local, middle and senior, have been with the company 10, 20, 30 years.” Stephen joined the company as a Negotiator at its Aylesbury branch in 1977, twenty years before some of today’s younger trainees were born. He gave up the opportunity to go to university to join Connells direct from school and by 21 was a branch manager, helping the office become the most profitable in the company. By 1990, when he was…
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Features
This is how to get sales progression really moving
New technology can save time and trouble, says Andrea Kirkby, by getting your deals moving smoothly.
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Features
Beat online competitors with a cracking branch
High street agents have a precious differentiator to their online competitors, says Joanne Christie, it’s a place to meet – and much more.
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Latest property news
ZPG snaps up comparison website money.co.uk
UPDATE: Zoopla has today gained approval from the FCA to acquire Dot Zinc Limited, which operates the Money.co.uk website. The sale will now go through on 1st October 2017. Also, at almost the same time the FCA approval was announced, ZPG revealed that its CEO Alex Chesterman today sold 4.25 million of his shares in the company, or approximately 1% of its issued share capital. The sale of the shares, which were sold at £3.63p each, will see Chesterman cash in just under £15.5 million. Original story starts: Zoopla parent company ZPG has bought financial products comparison website Money.co.uk for £80m, prompting shares in ZPG to rise briefly by 7% after the announcement yesterday. The Cirencester-based company behind the website was set up in 2008 by CEO Chris Morling and, until now, had been one of the few independently-owned online comparison services for consumers buying financial products such as credit cards, insurance, mortgages, loans and investments. The FCA-regulated firm offers products from some 600 providers and attracts over two million visits a month to its website and has 50 staff and ten million registered users. The deal will see the company’s shareholders paid £20m in cash in December this year…
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Latest property news
First time buyers are back in the market
First time buyers are back with a vengeance borrowing £5.9 billion in June, up 26% on June and 9% on the same month in 2016, the Council of Mortgage Lenders latest figures show. The increase is on the back of first time buyers taking out 36,000 loans in June, 22% more than the month before. The increase is more than a blip. Figures from the CML, which is soon to be renamed UK Finance, show that during the second quarter of this year first time buyer borrowing increased by 18% taking out 91,400 loans. “June’s figures show a busy month in the mortgage market, with home movers having their highest monthly activity levels for over a year and an especially high number of loans for first time buyers,” says Paul Smee, Head of Mortgages at UK Finance (pictured, left). “But there are also signs of a softening market and we are not anticipating that this performance will be sustained in the second half of 2017.” Home buyer borrowing also jumped during July, increasing by 26% month-on-month and 15% year-on-year although buy-to-let borrowing remains subdued, but still rising, by 3% both by month and year comparisons. The CML data also reveals that…
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Latest property news
Are the Tories (finally) turning against Stamp Duty?
The campaign to reform the current Stamp Duty system and have recent increases for landlords and owners of high-value homes reversed is gaining momentum as a raft of the Tory MPs, think tanks and media line up. Yesterday the free-market supporting Adam Smith Institute said current Stamp Duty system is costing the economy over £9 billion a year because it prevents people moving to the homes they want near to their place of work, and that they must commute long distances instead. The Telegraph newspaper has also been running a campaign to reform the duty, which it says taxes too unfairly those who through no fault of their own have to pay high prices to move up their local property ladder. This week the right-wing MP Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured, left) said the UK should move to a ‘low taxation’ home ownership model and that, in the same way a cut to business taxes helped stimulate economic activity, so a cut to Stamp Duty would achieve the same thing. And former Tory party leader Ian Duncan-Smith (pictured, right) said in July that that the government should be using Stamp Duty to encourage landlords, not put them off investing. “It is time…
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Latest property news
House sales in ‘structural decline’ says Barclays
A city analyst working for Barclays believes house sales are in ‘structural decline’ in the UK. The comments by Jon Bell (pictured, below) come in a note sent to City investors yesterday in which he says the number of homes sold in the UK peaked in 1989 and have been declining ever since. Reason for the decline, the equity analyst says, include the increased number of homes owned by buy-to-let landlords, who tend to buy and sell properties less often than home owners. Bell points out that government’s own figures highlight how private home ownership has barely changed since the early 1990s while the extra housing stock made available since then has been swallowed up by private landlords. Bell also says the higher cost of Stamp Duty, a lack of new public and private housing and the UK’s ageing population, who tend to move less often than younger families, is also depressing sales. Bell, who works at the high street bank’s investment banking arm in the City, also proffers some more surprising reasons for the UK’s declining number of house sales. He says the government Help to Buy scheme for new homes is helping younger buyers purchase larger homes, and…
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Features
BTL issue: demand v supply
Both sales and rentals markets are challenging, says Rob Clifford, CEO, SDL Group, but its not all bad, in fact, we’re quietly confident.
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Latest property news
Government property market track record is “disaster” says agency chief
One of the UK’s leading estate agency CEOs has launched a blistering attack on the government’s handling of the property market since it was elected in June. Haart CEO Paul Smith reckons the number of landlords registering with its branches to buy property is down by almost a third as fewer landlords invest in property. He says that “this could have serious long-term consequences for the rental market and lead to higher rents, putting those who are trying to save for a deposit in an even more difficult position”. His comments follow the most recent overall data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) which reveals that , although mortgage lending rose in May by 10% year-on-year, the figures “flatter to deceive” says Paul Smee, Head of Mortgages at CML parent organisation UK Finance (pictured, left). “The seasonally-adjusted data shows a less buoyant lending picture, with home buying activity remaining relatively unchanged month-on-month and remortgage lending gradually decreasing each month since January,” he says. Disaster Haart’s Paul Smith (pictured, below) says he also thinks Prime Minister Theresa May’s legacy on home ownership has so far been “a disaster” and that ‘just about managing’ families are further away from owning their…
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